War has displaced Afghans from their homes and from their country for over three decades. With the assistance of the largest repatriation program coordinated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), five million Afghans returned from Pakistan and Iran between 2002 and 2011. However, the rate of refugee returns has declined significantly since 2008 due to worsening security in Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan that these return refugees encounter upon their arrival is far from the economically and politically stable country that they might have hoped for. One third of Afghans survive on less than $1 a day and another third barely earn more. Access to health care is very limited, with a ratio of only two doctors for every 10,000 Afghans (the US has 27). Every 27 minutes, an Afghan woman dies from a pregnancy-related condition, contributing to an average life expectancy for Afghan women of a mere 43 years. The infant mortality rate in Afghanistan is in 2011 the second highest in the world.

As of January 2011, the UNHCR estimates there are approximately 415,000 internally displaced people in Afghanistan.  Many return refugees have been unable to go back to their places of origin for reasons of continued insecurity or the lack of a viable livelihood. Poverty and natural disasters have also contributed to the recent displacement of Afghans, but violence has been the major factor in involuntary migration. Between June 2009 and September 2010, more than 120,000 Afghans fled their homes as a result of armed conflict.

As of 2011, there were still 1.8 million Afghans living in Pakistan given both security and economic instability in their country. However, the country that for decades has hosted Afghan refugees has become the site of extensive military activity that has displaced Pakistanis internally as well as back and forth into Afghanistan.

Many Afghans see their current government, hastily formed under US influence, as a continuation of the power and impunity of warlords rather than a reflection of true democratic participation. Many warlords received US military and financial backing and participated in the Bonn meetings that created Afghanistan’s interim government in 2001. The perception of the Afghan government as corrupt and unjust has only fueled the insurgency and impeded long-awaited peace and well-being in Afghanistan.